C++ Courses - do I get official certification at the end of my Well House course?

From my mailbox ...

Question:Hi there Graham. I am interested in 1 or 2 courses to do with C and C++ coding, but after reading further through the site you come to say there is no certification. Does this mean i can't bring away what i learn and show it too an employer because there is no proof?

Answer: You'll leave any of our course with a certificate of completion, which you are more than welcome to show to a current or prospective employer (or to anyone else for that matter). And if you ask us, we're more than happy to confirm that you attended the course, and to provide a description of what was covered in such a circumstance. We really want to help our delegate get on, and will do all we can to help, and we have a distinctly good reputation with quite a few big companies in our specific specialist field.

With many commercial products such as those provided by Microsoft, Oracle, Adobe and others, training courses are available from the commercial providers which include some form of official certification - stating that you learned from the originators - or more likely from subcontractors who present their courses and pay them a fee. In most cases, some sort of test will be involved but it will be organised in such a way that all but the weakest pass. Tested certification also leads to the suggestion that students are being trained to pass a test, rather than delegates to do a job.

With open source languages - and especially with C and C++, it's rather different. C++ isn't "owned" by anybody, so there is no recognised body that could provide such a certification. And that's not my wording - that's the most popular answer to a question asked at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2092672/c-certification on Stack Overflow. Attempts have been made by companies to come up with what they think should be a standard, and their own certification - I've looked at no fewer that four such schemes in the past 15 years after suggestions / invites to teach to their agenda and thus provide their certification, and have always decided against. Whilst it would be nice not to have to write and produce our own material, it would also limit our freedom to provide training appropriate for a customer's specific job. Quite commonly it would force us to use a commercial coding environment so that delegates left us only able to make best use of the subject taught when used through that environment, and we're simply not in the "game" of sending people back to their workplace after a course with a need to invest more money to make the best of what they have learned.

I hope that helps explain the certification issue with regard to Open Source. I'm very comfortable with what we do / provide and believe it's the best for the majority of our customers. Having said that, it is a policy that we review from time to time, sometimes on a certification scheme by certification scheme basis.

Question:Although i have dipped my hand in some C++ and done some minor edits too already made codes and compiled them, I am not sure where I can start from on your courses

I note you have modified some code ... however, here are the somewhat different questions I would ask to help decide.

a) Are you already a competent programmer in C? If so , you'll want to look at C++ for C programmers - 2 days, next start 26th January. [link]

b) If you are already a competent programmer, but in some language other that C, you'll want to look at C and C++ programming - 4 days, next start 24th January. [link]

Since C++ is an extended version of C, this course gets you really into the underlying fundamentals prior to covering the extended topics. A few of the extensions mean that a couple of basic C facilities become sidelined / less important, but that's very much a minority of the facilities and I'll clearly let you know which and not spend a lot of time on them during the C section of the course

c) If you are new to programming in any language, you should take a look at learning to program in C++ - 5 days, next start on Monday - that's 23rd.[link]

We do have places available all week on the courses. We're short of accommodation (if you wanted to stay with us) on the Monday night at this late stage, but could make other arrangements nearby at no change to the price, or we could provide an alternative accommodation list if you prefer.

I wouldn't normally be suggesting a course at quite such short notice, but you also wrote "Please get back too me as soon as possible." so I think you are looking really very quickly, right? Please feel free to email back / call me - I'm on 01225 708225. One of the rest of the team will be on that number at times I'm not there, and can help with booking, or can get me to return a call on technical / content issues. And that number (and emails) will reach us tomorrow (Saturday) too. (written 2012-01-20, updated 2012-01-28)

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